The National Interest July 4, 2016 Proposed reforms to the U.S. military command structure designed to save money likely won’t save enough to matter. They could, however, be a good idea anyway. Six years ago, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced plans to, among other things, shut down Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and move to cut at…
Author: James Joyner
War on The Rocks March 15, 2016 In “Rigor in Joint Professional Military Education,” Nick Murray argues that Congress and the Pentagon have done a poor job defining what it is they want the staff and war colleges to do and, especially, in holding their feet to the fire. This has led, he claims, to…
RealClearDefense March 3, 2016 The 25th anniversary of America’s victory in Operation Desert Storm passed without much fanfare on Sunday, February 28. Much to the chagrin of some of my fellow veterans of that conflict, the Pentagon held no official observance. Having gotten more than our fair share of accolades at the time, I’m not…
Christian Science Monitor December 4, 2015 This week’s mass shooting in San Bernandino, which killed 14 innocents and wounded another 21, seems sadly routine. We’ve had so many of these incidents in recent years that they flow together. And yet, as Max Ehrenfreund notes at the Washington Post, we’ve actually had a “massive decline” in gun violence over…
Christian Science Monitor November 3, 2015 Another day, another poll. Friday night, IBD/TIPP released a poll showing Donald Trump leading the field by 5. Last night, NBC/WSJ showed Ben Carson up by 6. Aside from the fact that “outsiders” continue to dominate the competition, the real news is the sheer volatility of the poll numbers. Here is the RealClearPolitics average over the…
Christian Science Monitor October 26, 2015 While the horse race aspect of campaigning is fascinating for political junkies and the life blood of media coverage, it’s pretty much a fool’s errand a year out. In December 2003, Howard Dean was running away with the race for the Democratic nomination while John Kerry was mortgaging one of…
James Weirick and James Joyner War on The Rocks October 16, 2015 Gen. Charles Dunlap makes a number of compelling rebuttals to our argument for civilianizing felony prosecution in the military to remove the unlawful command influence Catch-22. Nonetheless, our central thesis remains unchanged: Military commanders have two jobs — sending the message that sexual assault will not be tolerated…
Christian Science Monitor October 14, 2015 My impression of the first Democratic debate of the 2016 cycle comports with that of the media accounts that I’ve read: Hillary Clinton was the clear winner and, among her challengers, only Bernie Sanders made any impact at all. Clinton has been in the national spotlight for 23 years…
War on The Rocks James Joyner and James Weirick October 7, 2015 Recently, a military appellate court once again overturned a rape conviction on the grounds of unlawful command influence. This time (United States v. Garcia), the source of the influence went beyond a base commander or even a service chief and included comments made by…
War on The Rocks September 10, 2015 The dust has now settled after William C. Bradford, a newly hired West Point law professor, made headlines for a controversial essay published in the little-read student-run National Security Law Journal. The Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reported that Bradford was denied tenure a decade ago from the Indiana University School of Law for wildly misrepresenting…